Does my novel have too many characters?
This is hard to answer because "too many" is subjective. An epic high fantasy is likely to have more characters than a personal contemporary story. Even making a list of your characters isn't always helpful, because many will be walk-on or throwaway characters, and knowing that, they carry less "weight" in a list. You might not even list them because they're so unimportant, yet they take up valuable room in the reader's memory.

My twist on Robyn's exercise can help you find the answer.

Step One: Take a sheet of paper and draw two boxes in the middle, evenly spaced apart. Write your protagonist's name in one box, your antagonist's name in the other. Add boxes if you have more than one of either. If you find yourself adding a lot of boxes at this stage, you probably have too many main characters.

Step Two: Add boxes with the other character's names. Put them below the protagonist if they're directly connected to her, above the antagonist if they're connected to him. Put down:

Major secondary characters first (friends, sidekicks)

Then important characters (people the plot or story hinges on, but aren't hanging out with the main characters)

Then minor characters (recurring people who play smaller roles and are seen multiple times)

Then walk-on characters (people in one or two scenes who don't do much, but have names anyway)

Then any character who interacts with your protagonist or antagonist who isn't already listed

For this exercise, let's say a "character" is anyone who is A) named, as names = importance to a reader and suggest they should be remembered, or B) someone who is shown on the page affecting the protagonist (or antagonist). For example, your hero is mugged by three thugs. There are four people in that scene, but are all of them necessary?

Step Three: Draw lines connecting the boxes. Use a solid line if the character directly interacts and affects the protagonist, or a dotted line if they are connected more to someone else connected to the protagonist. For example, when your hero is mugged by three thugs, and only one speaks to him and actually interacts in a meaningful way, he gets a solid connection line. The other two thugs would get dotted lines to the first thug, because they're connected to him, but really don't affect the protagonist much.

Step Four: Draw wavy lines between any characters who are connected to each other so you can see the relationships.

Optional: Use different colors to help keep the connections clear. Depending on the number of characters and the number of colors available, you might use one color per character.

If you had a hard time finding room for all your boxes, that's a red flag you might have too many characters. Same if you have a lot of characters who have zero connections to your protagonist, but a lot of connections to the other characters in the book. If you see a lot of people with dotted lines to one person, that could be characters you can combine into one or two people (such as all those extra thugs).

Extra Tip: This could also be useful to see if a particular scene has too many characters in it, especially those hard-to-manage scenes with a group of people where everyone is chiming in about something. Who actually matters in that scene and who is just there to toss out a line?

Extra, Extra Tip: You could also do this with scenes instead of characters to test which scenes move the plot (use core conflict instead of protagonist) and which are just duplicating what another scene is doing.

What I like about this exercise is that it forces you to think about how the various characters are connected. Someone might feel like they're affecting the protagonist, but when you sit down and really look at it, they have no direct interaction with them at all. They're more connected to someone who is connected to the protagonist. That person might be a good candidate to cut, combine, or give more plot to so they do have a stronger connection (and possibly a deeper layer) to the protagonist and the story.

Of course, there are characters who affect change without ever directly interacting with the protagonist, so keep your story and what you want to do with it in mind if you do this exercise. You might use a different style or color of line to denote that if you have characters like this is your story.

Sometimes a visual representation can provide more information than words on a page. And looking at our stories from a different perspective can allow us to see things we normally would have missed.

Do you feel there' a right number of characters for a novel? Do you think it changes by story or genre? How many do you feel are "too many?"

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Janice Hardy is the award-winning author of the teen fantasy trilogy The Healing Wars, including The Shifter, Blue Fire, and Darkfall from Balzer+Bray/Harper Collins. The Shifter, was chosen for the 2014 list of "Ten Books All Young Georgians Should Read" from the Georgia Center for the Book.

33 comments:

I'm terrified to think of how a reader will handle the number of characters in my third book. Since it's the last part of the trilogy, I have to wrap things up, and that means giving proper attention to all of my new and recurring characters.

i dont think it counts for a trilogy if they read that far in my book they bought into your world enough so it doesn't matter. harry potter has a CRAP load of characters with names backgrounds and subplots. that's only by the third book

It counts, but in a different way. It's a good thing to think about when you write a series, because you do end up with a LOT of characters, and if it's too much, you can lose your readers. I know I stopped reading a very popular series because after waiting a year for the next book to come out, I couldn't remember half of the characters. The author probably had fifty or so in the first 50 pages.

Just make sure readers can remember who is who even if there's a long space between books.

Paul, I ran into the exact same issue in Darkfall :) I suddenly had casts from three books to deal with. Hmmm...I should probably add "be careful of how many characters you'll end up with in book three" to one of my things to think about in a trilogy posts, lol.

I suppose it helps to always keep one or two characters as your primary focus. It means the reader can budget their emotional buy-in better and the writer can avoid having to juggle too many character arcs.

Paul, I found it was the secondary characters that tripped me up. The ones that were important per book, but not the main focus, so readers didn't always remember them after a year between books. By 3 they all had roles. Yikes!

This is great, Janice - and I will print out to keep handy! (Somehow, having just returned from an out-of-town wedding where my son was an usher, I'm having visions of seating arrangements based on the bride and groom, and then all the interactions at the reception!) ;0)

Hi Janice! I'm a new reader to your blog and I just have to say it is AMAZING. The best compilation of writing advice I have found on the web so far. Your advice goes so far above and beyond the cliched usual advice... this is stuff that I wish my Creative Writing profs would teach and talk about in our workshops! You should consider teaching CRWR at the post-secondary level, I think you'd be great. I've read DOZENS of your articles over the last few days, so this comment is not only applicable to this one, I just thought it was about time I commented and thanked you for this excellent blog. But this post did really hit home with me as I tend towards too many characters in my writing! Thanks for your advice and even though I am not in your target age group for your novels, I will definitely be picking them up. If you write fiction half as well as you write about writing, then I'm in for a treat.

My novel is a sci fi drama/war, it has 26 characters, I plan to do 4 books but... is it alright to have this many characters? 16 are protagonists and antagonists, each one with a background story. I just want to make each story powerful, without confunding the reader, what shall I do? I'm from Mexico by the way.

It's always hard to say for sure without knowing the story, but my gut reaction based on your description...

The protagonist is traditionally the person driving the story, and while you can have multiple main and important characters, 16 protagonists does sound like too many to me. Even with four books, that's 16 people trying to be the hero, and you'll likely end up with 16 different "books" in one series. Even eight protagonists and eight antagonists feels like a lot. Unless some of those characters are involved in the same plot line, that's still eight different stories in one.

You might try looking at your series and figuring out who is the one character who is making the story happen. Who absolutely cannot be taken out or the entire story falls apart. Odds are this is your protagonist, and you'll have an antagonist opposing them. If each book focuses on a different character, then you could easily have four of each-one protagonist ad antagonist for each book in the series.

Next, look at your other characters and figure out how they fit into the story. Are they helping the protagonist in some way or do they have full plot arcs and problems of their own that in no way overlap with the protagonist? If they have their own story separate from the other characters, they might be books of their own.

Think of it this way. A traditional sci fi novel is 80,000 to 100,000 words. If you have eight protagonists all with their own stories, that's only 8-12,000 words per character of story. That's barely larger than a short story, so you really don't have time to develop any of those characters or their stories. If you're also showing the antagonist side, that brings it down even smaller.

Of course, if the 26 characters are spread out over four books, and each book has a different protagonist and antagonist, but is set in the same world or connected in some way, then you might be fine. A few main characters each with their own bad guys per book would have fewer characters per book.

awesome! Thanks a LOT janice... my 12 year old daughter whose starting to write a novel entitled,"fun times, sad times:doesn’t it matter?" is amazed by your tips! she now is making a perfect picture/novel thanks to your help..... thanks janice, thanks a lot..

I'd start with the Italy tourism boards. Most cities have websites with information on them. You can also use Wikipedia to get ideas on other places to do research, as well as go to your local library and ask the librarians. They'll be able to point you to shelves and shelves of books about it.

I'm writing an zombie apocalypse story, I have 69 characters, many are small characters with no real storyline, seven being a Mr. or Mrs. character while a few I know where I want to go with; I have a direction that I think I would want to go with all of the characters some helping to push another character's story. but I know 69 characters is a lot, and I have no Idea how I could take any out or putting two together; I'm now into chapter 9 and I have already grown to liking most of the characters, what do you think I should try to do, do you think their is any acceptable way to keep all these characters without losing the audience's attention?

69 is a LOT to remember. I think they've done studies that show the average person can only hold 9-12 people in memory or something. It will depend on how much those characters actually matter to the story. For example, if 40 of them are people the protagonist meets for one or two pages as they're passing through a town, readers won't expect to need to remember and won't. But if there are 40 with storylines and plots and readers are required to remember them for the story to make sense, that's probably asking too much. That many characters also means none of them get any real depth, because the book can only be a certain length.

Some characters you can call by title if they don't do anything or just appear in one or two scenes, such as "the waitress" or "the doctor." Others you can combine (which is the easiest). For example, if you have multiple characters who inspire the protagonist, maybe combine them into one person who inspires at various times when needed.

I worry that my historical novel "Bloody Mountain" has too many characters, but I have no way to reduce the number. I resolved to stick close to the facts and add flesh, emotions, anger, and fear to real people who actually lived. You see, the historical story has been written about MANY times, starting with the very first non-fiction accounts written in the era when it actually happened. There have NEVER been any serious fictional accounts, despite the obvious drama and historical significance. This is why I decided almost instantly to do it myself when I saw the first definitive non-fiction treatment fifteen years ago. The stage is 1500 miles long and beings and ends at the origin which happens to be 300 miles from the east end and 1200 miles from the southwest end in San Francisco. If I condense the character list, important parts of the story disappear. I think I will just live with it, unless somebody convinces me otherwise. I'd love to hear any comments you might have.

I think certain genres are more accepting of large casts, such as epic fantasy and historical. I'd write do your best to trim it down, but write it the way you need to. Then see what your beta readers think. If they get confused, you'll know where to clarify and who to combine if there's a problem.

I'm in the midst of a 4 book set, and there are a boatload of characters coming in and going out of all four. Not all at the same time but still, lots. So far, I'm having fun tracking all of them. But--I'm nowhere near done, so who knows?

In my novel my current WIP I have 18 characters. Lotus is the main character then Delphino and her parents are in the book who are goddess and god of the serene waters and others also. I also going to put some descriptions but not over do it.

I am writing a crime novel where the culture is a key "character". Without the culture the crime would not have occurred. Two prime characteristics of the culture are large patriarchal families and a community where everyone becomes involved in events. These characteristics create chaos that are used by the antagonist to meet his goals.

My reading group continues to tell me to reduce named characters; they are getting confused. Yet, when I write it and say "a neighbor" did X and then another "neighbor did Y" it seems too impersonal and does not relay (at least to me) the closeness of the community and why the individuals in the community acted the way they did.

I have the entire book written as a draft. My readers have not read every chapter and they only read a chapter every month or two. I have not always shared the chapters in chronological order.

Another related point is I have created a family tree with names in three generations to help the reader understand the family. Only about half of the characters have a significant role in the book. My goal was to show the connections between book characters even when the connections ran through an unused character. For example, a key character is the spouse of an aunt in the older generation.

Thoughts on the need to reduce named characters or simplify the family tree?

One final comment, the two most vocal critics are currently in an MFA program.

It sounds like you have a challenging concept, but your reasons for it seem good. I'd suggest getting some feedback from beta readers familiar with crime novels who can read the story in one or two sittings like a regular novel. If they have issues, then you know you need to trim back a few characters. If they don;t, it's working just fine.

You might also ask them to mark any areas where they get confused or forget who's who. That will help you spot the places where you can either cut a character, combine two characters, or flesh them out more so they're memorable and easily identified.

If you do need to cut back, you might look for places where you can combine a few characters. Maybe use fewer named neighbors and let them do the work of a large group. You can still give the impression of a lot of people, but the plot-affecting events only happen with a smaller amount of named characters.